>> you can tell i have pages and

things marked here. as you knowe house of representatives as a staffer to a former free market economics professor who had underpinning for what congress did and we talked a lot about this. former economics profess o but still professor but in the house of representatives. >> they have been role models for me. you can put values together into your politics. >> well, that's what i was so fascinating about in your book. the book is a as you talk about synthesis of faith, public service, the fact is as a lot of people came to know you and your

surprise victory, you were the only person in the history of the u.s. house to beat a majority lead e. -- i'm wondering if you can talk about syntheis. that's primarily why i wrote the book. sometimes conservative ideas go back to reagan or back to the founders. primary if you were it's a 4,000-year tradition.

it was all about synthesis. jefferson, madison. they all took the classics, greek, hebrew and they took math, science and liberal english. i taught at a liberal arts college for 148 years and i only applied to two. i don't know if i did a great job or not but it's still possible, right, it should hang together and if your ethics don't match up with the economic logic, right, carl mark, he couldn't line and where adam smith, those ideas do line up and mesh and i get at it in the book. adam smith, free market ideal,

madison wanted a large number of fashions competing against each other and they go right together. we are not teaching the kids enough of that these days. [laughter] >> one of the things i was struck by, ethics economics and politics are linked, this is from page 27. you said tbod works six days and rested on the seventh, do not steel presumes private property and right to hold things that may be coveted. the basis that permeates public policy from your perspective i found to be fascinating. our founding was an important

chapter in the history of faith. can you tell us a little bit as why you see our founding as tied in the history of faith. >> and the one thing our founders did not see, right, they saw clearly on incentives and the constitutional structure. you got at it. they could not see a day where the judeo christian tradition was a given. that's debatable. there's all the debate on jefferson's wall of state and the press, et cetera, no establishment of a religion but free exercise thereof. it's very interesting. the left, the left and i went to princeton seminary. let's make a deal. we will move the seminary across tracks.

we found it. the presbyterians. we are shairg a win-win group. you take schools but you have to teach ethics. it was assumed. and the protestant tradition and now the left has not only taken those schools but they said you can no longer teach ethics, there's no natural law taught anymore. you bring religion, you get laughed out of the room. this is for real. no ten commandants in our secular society, i don't think so. roam wasn't the most loving society. >> right. [laughter]

>> cold, sterile, brutal, doctrine at love at zero. you want xaición of love, to the left i know what they mean. they don't want religion establishment. and so those rights we argue in our tradition at least that they proceed the existence of government and so do you want a separation of that. do rights exist yes or no. we are at war with religious toleration. >> right. >> that's art of what was going on. >> you mentioned the catholic tradition, i'm catholic, i was struck by later on in the book,

a little later in the book how you delve into the works of st. agustín and thomas. and i find that obviously my faith informs, you know, pretty much everything i do. >> same here. my dad moves up to minnesota in 49th grade. that was a tough move. that was good. i went to hope college in michigan. protestant tradition. went to work at arthur anderson in business in detroit and went to princeton seminary. i went down to wesley seminary in dc next to american university and there was a great liberal friend of mine phil who wrote economics and ethics in

the same book. and so that was the fire, so i knew i wanted to teach philosophy and theology in college. once i saw that hook, the combination of, that was it. i worked in the world bank, i worked on sector stuff. i met my wife and was lucky enough, we both moved down where i taught economics and ethics. i ran the ethics minor program for 18 years and so that's how i live it out. it is my calling putting those things together and keeping that conversation going. a lot of this book is just old lecture notes. you touched on what you met here. meeting laura as you were closing on ph.d because it's not a memoir there's not much detail

around that. i'm sure the viewers would like to know a little more story there. how did you meet laura. she and kathy and i consider both of you friends. how did you come to meet her and date her and get married. >> we were just sitting around a mutual friend set up a blind date, it was awkward at first. hi, how are you doing, we started talking and we had values in common family setup. in dc? i met a normal person. she's catholic and protestant. i'm going catholic now. you see who is winning? hi, honey. jonathan went off to college. we have been the sad household.

>> dropped the oldest off at college. any tears shed? >> it hit me way harder. she's been home more and i'm out here three weeks out of the month. that's not good, boy, it hit me when you see the empty room every night. it's not good. >> jonathan probably not so much, right? >> he's doing all right except for uva lost over richmond. [laughter] >> this is great. i wanted to come back to something else that you talk about in the book that, i think, is really telling because you touch on, obviously our founding which is something those of us from virginia, obviously the founders, such a critical, you talk about the horizontal separation of powers and you mention senator mike lee. >> he's phenomenal but also the -- not just across the branches of the federal government but

the vertical as well which is that the states were to be a check on federal executive branch authority and growth. >> absolutely. >> and can you talk about what you're seeing both in terms of horizontal and vertical checks and balances and the problems that create for us? >> i go back real quick. you go back to madison. he went to princeton seminary. college of new jersey back then. he studied hebrew. a smart guy. the hebrew tradition, how long did it take human nature to fall? angels or little bit falling, three chapters. if that's the tradition that informs your thinking and you're the author of the constitution, what do you do, you separate power every way you can. the tenth amendment, vertical separation, federal, state,

local, enumerated powers and the foundest knew that and since then we violated that beyond comprehension. mike lee has a picture in his office where the house did 45-inches of bills and the executive branch did 11 feet. if you get the sense, we are upside down. we are. we have to push things back. the direct way to see bottom line, medicare, insolvevent. all federal revenues, we don't have for military, transportation, et cetera. it's the best data up here. it's the main graph of the

budget committee. >> right. >> so that's kind of evidence whereas virginia is a well-run state, so people think, you know, some of us that are constitutionalist, we are not antigovernment. you one a relate-run state with transportation -- by the way, education is in the constitution of the state and excellent education. it's in the -- we have to do that. we should do that. but the fed -- i got pants on fire for saying we debate what's on the salad bar in the education committee and we did. i don't know how they found it to be false. go check again, guys. we debated. that's on the salad bar at the local school, the founders were smarter than us. >> you noted in the mention of checks and balances, the vertical component is federalism and returning governance where it was intended to be even if

some of the implications are ones a few conservatives may not like. i thought that was an interesting point and that is the case. >> that's right. if the people vote, right, the key is we are supposed to be a democratic republic. that doesn't mean you get to win every debate, you have a fair process in a democratic republic. in the folks vote for more flowers, if you're a physical hawk, you lose. you can move and you want a large number of options. >> i mention this, dave, from time to time to folks specially talking to young people, i point out that the federal government is the creation of the states. the states are not creation of the federal government and it's remarkable to me how few people realize that. >> right. >> and i thought your point about the federalist checks and balances gets overlooked a lot of the times because we are concerned about the trampling of

separation of powest and the executive branch abuse there, but it's powerfully evident when it comes to overriding the prerogatives of the states and we see so many cases in this reforward, for virginians we know how important it is the clean power plant and epa overreach there. it would be devastating in southwest virginia, 23 states have said we have to stop it and unfortunately we are not among them. i sure hope that the legislative branch at the federal level upholds the state's prerogatives when it comes to that executive branch overreach and puts a stop to that. >> it is important to note how this has come about. row v. wade on the judicial side, there's how issues. you take two or three tough votes you might get kicked off.

we arranged 30-40 years, judiciary, over here, now the same thing with the executive. we vote on clean air-clean power thing and we tell the federal government you will implement it and determine what clean is and you've given in law the federal government tremendous power and now the farmer like you say and the ranchers in virginia are learning what that looks like. they are having a hard time staying afloat. we need to retain article 1. congress shall make all law. there's nothing wrong with that. a lot of great guys and seniority and wisdom goes with that.

this day the money is dominant. we had the presidential level on the republican side and dem side, 80% outside votes going to presidential candidates. so there's an amazing power of the, you know, winning election and on top of the money part people are lining themselves out to be a chairman of a committee. well, that's -- people want to do that, right, but if you vote in lock step with leadership in order to get that slot, you can just start looking, both sides do this. if you're not i think to what's best for the country all of the time. >> it's consistent obviously with the founders, speaking of the founders. go and come home. i ran for the senate, got close and i said then that i would serve no longer than two terms, 12 years in the senate because i think it's important that that be the mind set and that be the mentality. >> yeah. >> speaking of the founders, do you have a favorite founder and

who is it and why? >> probably madison just because seminary and i love, you know, the constitution and that kind of thing. washington is interesting to me because he just stands out. there's all the other guys in jefferson and virginia and there's plenty, we are blessed with just history in virginia, but washington just the more i read on it, he's the one guy that everybody likes. he walks into a room and he's the man. >> yeah. >> everybody severed him. they deferred automatically. the problem with books is you don't quite get to see them live but you want to take a look at the guy's face, who is this man, this is it, right. >> that's mine. i live on one of his old farms. >> amazing. >> i tell you a funny story. i was actually on a business trip and talking to a british historian there and i mention to

him, we were talking about the founding and as said, many belief including me that divine inspiration and that divine providence and i told him about living in mount vernon and he said, you know, it's possible that the british empire could have defeated george washington but george washington, thomas jefferson, james madison, benjamin franklin and john adams, the whole bloody lot of them, no way. [laughter] >> this underpinning of the moral case for free enterprise which i think is missing often from conservative. >> it is. >> commentary and the republican side and, you know, i believe like you do that economic growth and opportunity upward mobility

and republican party virginia creed says, free enterprise system is the greatest plyer -- supplier and you make that point really in the book on this page 198, freedom and earnings, i don't know if the camera can pick it up. the next graph shows the income of people in the bottom and four groups of countries from the least market-oriented to free market. always, history show it, those that don't have a book, go buy the book. this chart is definitive proof of that and, you know, one of the things we talked about here, mentioned work, we understand that there's not just economic value and labor as ph.d you know that's the case but there's

human dignity in work, a market economy that has a tine amic growth allows for people to know the dignity of work but this data, why didn't more people not understand it and where this kind of enamored by socialism coming from? >> political divide. i grew up with liberals and liberals is root word of liberal is liberty. adam smith is a classical liberal and madison and the lines have gotten confused. it's not just incomes. i ran thousands of regressions on all the indicators, all the things that liberals want. guess where you have the cleanest environment, capitalist country. guess where you have the highest degrees for eighth grade women? capitalist country. civil liberties and you talk about the dignity of work and one of my favorite scholars is

deidra, you have the sixth volume set. she has ph.d in economics out of chicago and ph.d in literature, incredibly smart person and her book says the cause of modern economic growth which started about 17th -- 1700, boom, you get a hockey stick. boom, massive economic growth. she takes on 20 nobel loreates. capital, human capital, technology, geography, trade, et cetera, et cetera. the primal cause is at 1700, moral language changed such that we started calling a businessman, businesswoman

morally good. abraham, moses, jesus, gandhi, any tradition, agustín, mohamed, et cetera, no where in that line you find someone saying capitalism or free markets or economics is morally good. it's something that you put up but we changed thelingo and the problematic thing is the thesis is reversible. right now you ask what are we teaching our kids in school, k-12, are we teaching that business and free capitalism is morally good and it's kind of corrupt and business wall street is nasty and unfortunately there are a few bad apples but the predominant of people are basically good, every small business person wants to give their employees health care. that's one thing i learned. teaching economics i didn't get out and knocked doors enough. i learned real economics.

people are very good and helped employees. we have to reverse the moral language and teach kids that it's not just work, it's a calling and you better be happy and passionate about what you do every waking hour of your life otherwise you will have miserable life. we have to pump the kids up and show them, hey, this is good for you and by the way, it's good politics too because you're telling the kids the truth and you're pumping them up on business and the left is a little critical specially in higher ed of business. we have a theme. >> talking about young people, obviously a college professor and enjoyed it clearly from the book. not just a professor but a teacher. >> absolutely. >> would you encourage today your students or students to get involved in politics? >> yeah, do i, but in there i set my eye -- idols biasically

both gave counsel. do math until 30 and philosophy at 250 and politics near death. [laughter] >> instilled wisdom and taken care of appetite, make sure you're done with that deal. come do internships. >> go knock doors. >> you learn. >> go into a vocation first and i thought you were going to ask about going into the teaching too. always major in your passion. i was adviser too for 18 years, make sure you do what you love, but minor in accounting. right now it's a joke, minor in science or accounting or web design or something where you can make a dollar in case, right?

follow your passion and that usually was good counsel, i had people come back and say, hey, i'm glad i did that, i needed a little plan. >> great advice. i always say, you know, i know a lot of successful people from kind of an external evaluation of success. >> right. >> who are not happy. i don't know any happy people who are not successful. do what makes you happy and you'll be successful at it. >> it is the key. >> if your goal is the success part, you may find yourself not very happy doing what you're doing. >> the incentives from the video generation, it's too much on the glitter but the kids are doing better, they are liking their parents more and there's good sign. [laughter] >> we talked about the economy and kind of a lost generation here in terms of what they've dealt with in the economy and you make an interesting point,

the economic dead end in chapter 12 and the first you note even as those keeping track of nothing but the dow jones numbers and the slight uptick in job numbers tell themselves that everything is back to normal and everything is fine and among most citizens there's uneasiness and then you a few pages later, chapter called invisible recovery, current our economic problems outcome of decades without sound money, increase in regulation, with increase in regulation, without growing government a great recession is actually dangerously optimistic, calling it a great recession is dangerously optimistic. misdiagnosis as a downturn implying that all we need to do to get out of it is wait. that's bad news if we have broken the fundamental drivers of the economy which you clearly think we have.

a couple of things, we've been told that this kind of flat recovery is the new normal. >> yeah. >> and that we just have to accept economic growth rates 2-3%. we are never going see 4-5% again. >> right. >> your point is that this is because some of the fundamentals of our -- fundamental triefers of our economy, some of the fundamentals that we need to get right again. >> getting the education back and protestant work ethic and catholic tradition is the same thing. the vocation, you have to get that back. the positive thinking and secondly the regulatory overhang is tremendous. i think it's 2 trillion out of an 18 trillion-dollar economy. you talk to every small business

person beginning the obamacare, you can disagree with the health care kind of thing but the results are in and premiums are given up conservatively, 15 to 20%, deductibles are 2 to 5,000 for the poor and all the economic study show the average family has about $400 on hand. so you put that together. it's just devastating. the average family knows, i can't make it to another downturn and the fundamentals of the economy, we are growing at 1% and that's with the deficit this year, 550 billion, so stimulative. so if you're growing at 1% and i get into debate with fed guys. come on, if you raised 2%, it would crash.

markets were getting jittery. we had the debate. over a quarter point rise. jittery. 2% wouldn't be normal. >> the sugar high. >> right, sugar high and then the classic solo economic. bread and butter is capital accumulation. capital, not financial capital but machinery, right? who is willing to put millions and millions into physical, a plant with the bet that you're going to make money? nobody. >> you don't know what regulation is going to come next. >> if you're not making the positive bet. everybody is looking across the sea. that's not the entrepreneurial

spirit we need. >> let me talk to something in terms of the economics as well. you make a point in here on page 49 and you made it throughout this book, you said washington should not be in the business of picking the winners and losers, the best way to ensure a vibrant and strong economy is not on the powerful friends they have in washington. i have talked about how this president, president obama over the past eight years has really moved our economy away from an economy where it's based on, you know, the premise that what you know is more important than who you know to where who you know is more important than what you know. >> right. >> what we are seeing the decisions of 100 million americans every day in the private marketplace on our healthcare choices that you

talked about, energy decisions, internet, you know, you name it are being supplanted by the decisions of a hundred political appointees in the city and that has a dampening effect and i call it the influence economy, but you're right about this -- distortion of incentives and people being rewarded more for getting the better, you know, targeted tax credit than they are for building a better mouse trap. >> the american people have figured it out. the new media where you go on the web and for good or for bad, it's brought by the language and i haven't gone to seminary. i try not to get negative with folks, but the educational upside is huge. people are figuring out what's going on right now. on the republican side, 80%

going with outsiders, on the left side bernie is getting 50% of the vote, unheard of. to see that much energy because people have seen that the small guy has been left behind in the dust and if you don't have a lawyer, access to dc, the biggies do, they can get through the regulatetory tape. they don't like it. back in the 50's, general motors and just common sense saying, as general motors, so the nation goes. we have to get back to that. all of our ceo's, we had etna, et cetera, the ceo, i don't know him. somebody is scared of the federal government. when you're losing 200 million a quarter and you back out of 11 to 15 but the exchange are okay, holy mole, the pressure on the biggies and you can imagine the

pressure of the small guy, put a huge rain water tank underneath their little restaurant for $200,000, $200,000, that's four years of kid through high-price university. the free market piece, that's the hardest thing to teach. that is what our country is built on, we allow prices to dictate, you go into wal-mart. how do they know to put ten loafs of bread and car batteries on the table. every time they scan one, that's what was purchased. that information goes to the supplier, hey, make ten more loafs of bread and car tires, diaper, whatever. no central planner knows that. the day you start picking winners and losers, it's not a

little error, it's catastrophic. the maybe reason why i wanted to run for office and to try to convey the logic. >> you point out, they say, well, you know, the private sector business folks subject to corruption, no doubt that's true. people commit crimes all of the time. >> yeah. >> and yet there's this notion that that person in that position making the decisions is somehow immune from any of that and it's a view of the left i've always felt that the profit motive is evil and the political motive is somehow inherently good. that is the mind set, you talk about that, you know, in this book and kind of expose which i think it's healthy. >> the madisonian and when you

have a 4 trillion-dollar budget out of 18 trillion-dollar economy, that's a concentration of power and the executive branch howdies proportionate control over the 4 trillion-dollar budget. so right now we are going through the budget thing. i wish we were in regular order because i'm on the budget committee. that would mean the budget would go from committee to the floor by the people's representative. a budget process is such a mess, five or ten people are going to determine the budget of the united states in the next month. i tried to call out the red flags on that and tell people to go to cbo and educate yourself on all the budget numbers because it's a big deal. >> yeah. huge deal. another thing that you talked in terms of the budget committee that's in the book, you talk more about the debt and the deficit and a few pages in this book, then we will hear on the nightly news over the course of a month. >> it's amazing. >> you talk about not only the

economic aspect of it but the moral aspect of it as well. i remember, you know, in past debates and discussions about the future of the country, huge debate over when i worked on the hill, you know, we got to a balance budget for the first time in 40 years and it seems to have just fallen off the radar somehow and yet the debt has doubled. 18trillion, 19 trillion on the way to. >> yeah. >> yet, it doesn't get much attention. why is that? >> well, i think it's both sides get overcommitted. you have a bunch of good bills, right, they are called economic goods. not economic bad. everything is good, right, you want more education, more roads, more missiles, more this, more everything. but as i said before, the debt is 19 trillion, the unfunded liabilities, the promises to pay on medicare, medicaid, social security are a hundred trillion and so in ten years all revenues

are going to be used only for the mandatory spending, not a dollar for military and this kind of thing, where is the ethics in this. the ethics, everybody who the is lobbying up here on behalf of all goods, all goods, it's for forgetting one group of people called the kid, the kids when medicaid and medicare and social security are insolvent in 14 years, seniors are going to get a clip in 14 years, period, that's in the law right now. medicare is not far behind it. the kids get way more than a 20% clip. i taught those kids. no one is sticking up for you guys, i'm going to go to the hill and i go to the press, i'm one of the few that dives into the media of the press and i get tortured because of it and it's my calling and i want to do that and i go out every day and say those numbers, here comes brat again.

it's a moral call to go change those mandatory spending -- you have to run a bill through house and senate and overcome a veto. we can't do it on the budget committee. most people don't know the basic facts and you say why and why is because if you yell too loud, what are you going to do about it and i get constituents, well, what are you doing to fix it, you vent -- haven't done anything. i'm messaging, i'm writing on it, i'm trying to influence folks, i have balance amendments in. i'm talking to democrats, the war between the right and the left personally, we all get along up here. we work on the room, i debate my good catholic friends in the morning and we debate economics, everything. they are friendly good people. they didn't get to that level by doing jabs and putting people down. we all get along great.

the press makes this left-wing, right-wing divide. that's not being by the right and left. go do a quick scab and see who is controlling 4 trillion. >> the media tends to, you know, they -- they really extol the virtues the tbhubz the middle. everybody plays a role in the process. those on the left who are making the argument for either side.

>> you take a little thump but you need to know how to govern, compromise and unify. if you have a 550 billion-dollar deficit, kids, should we increase that number or decrease it, right? when the fifth graders get it, talking about compromise and unified, i'm willing to compromise with everybody but it has to be in the same direction, if you have 1% economic growth, i'm willing to compromise as long as 1% goes up, any policy that will increase economic growth, you will find me at the table. >> right. that's one of the things too, increase economic growth to the point of the debts and deficit. that would do more than anything to bring down the debt and reduce deficits to economic growth. >> absolutely. >> and there's this kind of false sense of security because the relatively low unemployment rates, important economic indicator the economists would say but there's a lot underneath that and, for example, as you

know in the common wealth we have a $1.5 billion revenue short clause. >> right. >> we have a 3.7% unemployment and how can that be? >> i know. >> we are at just like the country, we've had declining labor force participation rates and we are at a 10-year low in virginia. and so people have left the entire workforce entirely. they're counted as employed toward the unemployment rate and we've been trading out, you know, high-paying jobs for lower-paying jobs. as we talked about, there's human dignity in all work and we should value that but that's one of the reason that is the revenues are down and so, you know, people are going to say, well, we have to raise taxes to close that gap. that's the exact wrong approach.

>> wrong way. >> we don't need more working virginians paying higher taxes, we need more working. the administration is always touting that just like in richmond, but the fundamentals to your point and we talked about earlier are not sound. >> when you layed it, i saw the piece, the common wealth and where we understand and racial tensions are at all-time high. you don't get that when the economy is humming along. you get that at 1% growth and people feel they are competing against each other for jobs. we should never feel that in the country. you don't see people getting on each other's case. the low-growth economy is causing that and we haven't educated the people when you talk about the labor force participation rate, that's right on the money and then our kids

are competing against the world, the chinese, indians and the chinese, they are working hard, the indian students, i have indian friends that are phenomenal work ethic. so we are competing felonily now. you cannot make decisions in isolation here for the u.s. or the common wealth of virginia to hey, let's do minimum wage of 15 bucks, our competitors across the ocean are laughing at us. really, you don't have productivity but you're going to raise the wage rates. they're laughing and getting a chuckle out of it and we have to put productivity levels up and people probably know the wage rate is the same thing as productivity. if you raise your productivity, your wage rate goes up and we are not spending enough. >> are they still tracking wages and productivity? >> in the short run you get a

blipse. >> he had a piece in the national review that was talking very much about what you talk about in terms of race relations in the u.s. and the economic dynamic. >> right. >> but if you get a chance that's a great book and talks a lot about what is going in coal country and other parts. in virginia as well. let me talk about a couple of other things here while we have some time. the book-writing process. so this is a very thoughtful book and i enjoyed reading it. i've written a book. if you bet my college friends, you would get no prospects.

i would cafer out a time, a weekend, because i would have to get in the rhythm and write. some people get up at 5:00 a.m. and write before they work out or get on the treadmill, how did you as a member of the u.s. house, someone who prides himself when you're home always having meeting with constituents, town hall meetings, obviously a family man as well. how did you find the time to -- this book is 200 -- 235 pages. >> a lot was already written and i had a philosophical reader if you're sleepy at night, go google that one. what is knowledge today and so that was some heavy-hit -- what is knowledge and how do you know what you know and we've had

2,000 year search for that and no one found it. broke that thing wide open, russell, some of the world-class flo -- philosophers. i don't own it. i want to give it to you for free. after kind of martin luther king, gandhi, kennedy, that period, right, there's been very little systematic thinking and so i wrote a book on that and i had economic notes from my lectures over the years and i had a few books, brief history

of ethics, people that have read that, we will see a lot of that embedded in this book. niel ferguson. >> yeah. >> i had a good friend that helped me write. i'm not jefferson. i have all the big ideas and i got together with a friend and he helped me whip it together. there's things you look back and say, i forgot to put that in there. you have a ton of knowledge and you want to put it in there. [laughter] >> that's the way i did it. i would look the way i did. i'm not a 5:00 a.m., write a few page, look for a few days in a row and start cranking stuff and get out of the computer and carve it together. >> that's great.

>> i wanted to go back to your teaching. at the -- i think it was in your graduate school, three teachers who were mentors. >> yeah. >> who had an impact on you. can you share who those are and how they had an impact? >> hope college in michigan, if you you're from michigan you go like that. i had a world religion, i won't name them. my preacher in a dutch reform church was a scottish reform presbyterian kind of preacher but he had, carl, calvin in his head coming and going, the great systematic thinkers in our tradition and he could preach and was great and had me over when i was a college kid and when you're in college you don't have your act all together. all three of the folks cared for me as an individual and i saw what a christian concern looked like. i said, hey, not only am i

thankful for this, what this college has done for me, i want to do that for my life. i always aimed to be a professor based on these three and i had plenty more, a guy at american, ph.d, he went to church with me and the guy who did economics and ethics, he was the minister to bill clinton. i'm bipartisan. i'm friends with both sides of the aisle and i had mentors, working on economic development in the third world. world bank i worked a couple of years and with a woman boss from the philippines and singapore. great people all along the line and it helps you grow and so i want to pass it on, that's why i wanted to teach. at the end of the day, congress, hey, i'm done teaching, i'm 20 years of talking, now it's time to let's do it, let's put some of this in action and so i gave it a run. >> what is a typical day like? you're coming back in and starting again tonight on the

day that we were having this conversation. >> yeah. >> what's it look for the folks, i know a lot of c-span viewers probably know this but you get up tomorrow and do what? >> yeah, it's weird because the presidential year. we had over a month at home which is abnormal but the normal is three weeks in a row up in dc, get up early and go to the gym, work out with everybody, democrats, republicans, we all get along, watch the news and then you start going to budget committee meetings, we got kicking off again tomorrow and voting throughout the date meeting with constituents, getting your head up in terms of what's coming out at us and working with the staff. three weeks of that. you go home for one week and to the politics and run for office again and meet with your constituents where i have ten counties and i promised to be in every county once a made. i wasn't clear thinking when i

made that promise. i've been going around like crazy. >> we had lines changed in virginia, yours changed somewhat, how has that been in terms of having a district that you're used to and all of a sudden lose constituents and voters, gain constituents an voters. i taught my student over 18 years and dispersed through the region. you almost wonder if someone designed it. i lost great friends, i was there this past weekend twice running through those counties. great people. it's fun, you get to meet new people, boy, it's hard work. getting into new counties, get to go meet new people and introduce yourself and sharing ideas when you're new people are

pret -- pretty skeptical. i think our approval rate is 12%. here is proof oaf what i'm saying. you do talk about and it's clear in the book -- [laughter] >> you know, you say the same thing back home as you say here and anywhere else. my sense is and i think we see it, people are receptive to the substantive conversation. i think they are hungry for it. >> yeah, do i. it goes back to the guys that you talk about. newt gringrich. i ran on the republican creed of virginia and it's an american creed. it's not really republican. adherence to free markets, equal treatment for every citizen under the law. >> right.

>> you say that to anyone. >> greatest provider in economic justice. >> the problem is not enough people hold themselves to those promises when they're up here, right, they say free markets and vote for everything that's not free market, and so i tried to do that and i get in all sorts of trouble. you can follow my vote. you can predict every one of my votes and go check it out and see if i'm fudging or not. >> here is something really important to try to get you pressed on. on november 142nd, randolph placeing hampton, what is your prediction? >> i have to say go jackets. i got to flip the coin at the last game. it's a love-hate thing but it's fun. i flipped the coins and three captains said, are you congressman brown, they said good job. we all like each other.

they are a free market. >> hunting grounds for you. >> they're all good folks. [laughter] >> that's great. dave, thanks. enjoyed reading the book and encourage others to do it and thanks for taking to time to write it. >> good interview. you took notes and went beyond. >> i highlighted and everything, yellow highlighter. >> super job. thank you. it's been fun working with you over the last couple of years. >> same here. thanks so much. >> you bet. >> c-span where history unfolds daily, in 1979 c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> i could not think of a more story than that one that really described how people view fly-over nation because you had

a reporter from indiana who went down and really went out of her way to find some sort of mom and pop shop that she could stereotype. that was basically allowing people to say, well, if you own a business and you want to choose how you want to run your business, that's fine. if you don't want to violate your religious conscious, there are limitations, people think it's a free-fall, no. i don't want to give you my artistic skill or my laborer my expression, then that's understandable. that's what it was about. this reporter went out of her way and went to this really little, you know, really tinny small town. it was one of those small towns where you have the store front windows and still park in the

middle of the street and went in and she saw crosses of the wall of the pizza shop and said, here it is. walked inside. cristal is the daughter was at the cash register that day and she asked her well, would you serve -- would you cater a gay wedding and the weird thing is there was no actual service done. no money were exchanged or anything like that. it was a hypothetical question and cristal said we serve gays and lesbians is one thing but the act of a wedding ceremony goes on what we believe as christians. it was weird that they went to a pizza shop. i have gay friends and gay family members. we would never cater a wedding with pizza.

do these people not understand like our navy base, they are a block party in st. louis, gay navy base, they had bottle service. no one is going to cater their wedding with a pizza. any way, that became a big story. the restaurant, they were at the center of all of this maddening debate. they had to close up shop and they were getting death threats for a hypothetical question. and it was maddening because not only was it something that never actually happened, there was no discrimination that took place except in discrimination against christian proprietors of a pizza shop. this is more than an issue of whether or not you are serving a cake at a gay wedding, photographing a gay wedding or giving pizza to a gay wedding reception. take that variable out of it. this is ultimately about what owns your labor, can the government come in and say, no, no, you actually don't get to

determine how you work and when you provide your services, we do. that's exactly it. it's about association. we've already had supreme court decisions on this. the thing about it is you're talking about indentured services and that's what this boils down to. when you remove politics, that's about indentured servitude. and that's the scary thing about it. and this, though, the fact that you had a reporter that went to a small town and sought someone out to prove a narrative that she was building, that's exactly why people in fly-over nation have just had it.